In pre-colonial Philippine society, a person bound in debt-servitude or semi-slavery with limited rights, occupying a status between freemen and slaves.
From Tagalog 'alipin', likely related to 'alip' (servant). This was a formal social status in Tagalog, Visayan, and other Philippine societies before Spanish colonization.
The 'alipin' system shows that not all unfree labor was slavery—it was contractual debt-servitude where people could eventually earn freedom, revealing sophisticated pre-colonial Philippine legal systems.
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